


i wanted it bad

by shortitude



Series: elastic hearts [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kissing, Season 2 compliant, coda fic to another fic, mentions of precious cinnamon roll Monty Green, raven and bellamy talking a lot mostly, sequel work, vague hints of ptsd, vague mentions of torture, wtf is this even idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-10
Updated: 2015-06-10
Packaged: 2018-04-03 20:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4113270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shortitude/pseuds/shortitude
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Monty makes moonshine. Raven and Bellamy talk, mostly about sex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i wanted it bad

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Elastic Heart by Sia, which I still claim is a Raven song. IMPORTANT NOTE: though it might feel like a standalone fic, this is actually a coda-slash-sequel to 'now watch the queen conquer' (yes, we went from Nicki Minaj to Sia, why do you ask?). You CAN read it without reading that one first, because it's set within the wide timeline of the year in that fic. I'm not the boss of you, do what you want. 
> 
> Also, yes. I mentioned that one was world-building and now I have it as an excuse to write PWP for this ship? So, you'll notice there's now another series -- hopefully, this will come with more works. Hopefully, some of them might be porn.
> 
> Anyway, enjoy this cocktease.

The first time Monty makes moonshine after Mount Weather using the distillery Raven built him during her extra hours (in secret), he sends a bottle to her workshop through a messenger. The reason for all this subterfuge regarding booze is that most of the Delinquents haven’t reached the legal age of drinking according to Ark law; old enough to be sent to Earth to survive but not old enough to enjoy a glass of old whiskey, that was the shit world they lived in.

Before the Ark survivors crashed down on Earth, adults and children and all, the Delinquents had pretty much let loose and gone wild, but now? Now, Monty has to make his hooch on the sly, because he could still get reprimanded. It’s been a few months, long enough for the Guard and the Chancellor and Kane to have forgotten almost all the things the young adults had been through, and gone back to treating them like children.

The thing is, with a group they still refer to as the Delinquents, what else is to be expected but for them to find away to play the law like a puppet? Certainly, there might not be an actual law in place for it officially, but not even Miller got a cup of whiskey from his dad. So, they’ve improvised their own. 

And, though nineteen and closer to the age when she’d have been legal to drink on the Ark, Raven ends up siding with her people first, and helping out. (She was and is, after all, the original Spacewalker. She was the delinquent first.)

It takes longer than usual for this batch to brew, precisely because now they’ve reformed the inside of the Ark to act as living quarters, in preparation for winter; but as a symbol of gratitude Monty sees it fit that she get the second bottle of the ‘harvest’. 

Truth be told, Raven hasn’t ever been an enthusiastic drinker. Given her family history with booze, it’s always been an intimate fear that growing to like alcohol even the slightest would turn her into her mother. But now, there are some things that Raven knows with absolute certainty: she would never put liquid courage before family, before her own health; she isn’t her mother, and never will be. 

So when Bellamy sneaks the bottle into her workshop late in the evening, she accepts the offer. Just in case, as a safety measure, she tells him to stay; if she’s in danger of letting her hair down, she trusts that Bellamy would know to stop her. 

But, she’s wrong. 

It turns out they both need it. The first two drinks are the toughest to swallow; one for her and one for him, knocked back quickly, they feel like a firey punch to their throats. They both wheeze, unintentionally, and share a quiet laugh over it. 

It isn’t the first time that Raven feels a treacherous thought such as this: she’s glad that it’s just Bellamy and her in the workshop. If Kyle had been here too – though he has no reason to be, as his qualifications have him working shifts elsewhere on Camp (when he’s not at Mount Weather), he still likes to drop by and spend time with her – he would’ve probably found some way to take jabs at the former janitor just for being so normal. As it is, it’s pleasant and quiet and familiar in a way that Raven can’t put into words because she doesn’t know when Bellamy became someone constant enough in her life to be familiar in any manner. 

The smiles linger, as faint as they are – and nowadays, smiles are always faint on them; on Bellamy especially – and they wait another few minutes before the second drink. In the meantime, Raven closes up shop and cleans her desk, and tells him to get the tin mugs resting on the top shelf above her work station so they can drink like civilized human beings. 

By the time they give the hooch another go, they’re sitting down in the cot she uses for power naps sometimes (or simply crashes on sometimes, exhausted from overexerting her leg, and stares at the ceiling from). Side by side, close enough that their knees could brush if they wanted to, though also with the excuse that the cot is narrow and there’s no other choice but that. He’s got his back propped against the wall the cot’s pushed up against, and Raven is leaning forward with her arms on her knees and her head bent forward to release the tension in her neck.

Because of this, she doesn’t see him when he talks, doesn’t see what expressions play on his face before he opens his mouth, doesn’t know if he hesitates or not. She just hears it. “So…you and Wick.” 

Three little words that she has come to dread hearing, for how many times she’s had to give the answer so far: _you and Wick_. For Raven, the thing is, Kyle is a friend; he was there when she wanted something physical and he got her to admit that she didn’t want to be alone and he carried her from Mount Weather and made her feel safe then, and for those things she’ll always be grateful. But she doesn’t want more of him. She doesn’t need more of him, other than him being a friend, because thinking about having sex after Mount Weather is like dragging nails down a blackboard, to her. She hasn’t let him touch her – him or anyone – since, and yet it feels sometimes that though this is enough for Raven, it isn’t for Kyle. And if she’s had to answer to _you and Wick_ so many times until now, maybe it’s because he’s talking about them as a ‘we’. 

She feels a pressure between her eyebrows, probably not the result of the moonshine but the reaction to Bellamy asking that question. (Yes, apparently, it matters that Bellamy asks it. Because he’d understood. Bellamy had understood everything that Raven had needed from him, and hadn’t asked her for more. Given, but hadn’t asked; she doesn’t forget the Grounders' camp, she never will.) 

“What about me and Wick?” finally, she manages that.

“I—“ Here, she looks over her shoulder at him to see he regrets having opened his mouth, frozen with his lips parted and the thought on his tongue. He settles for glaring into his mug. Well. 

“Come on, shooter,” she tries, tries to dispel the tension in a mocking tone, “That can’t be jealousy I hear, can it?”

The look he gives her reminds Raven so much of the Bellamy from before everything went to hell and back that she almost feels joy at seeing it. Even if it’s a glare. And then, it turns rueful. “Not that it’s any of my business anyway.”

This is Bellamy. She’s learnt him well enough to know she doesn’t need to thump her fists against her chest and snap back a _damn straight it’s not your business_ , because he gets her. But he also confuses her, opening the subject. “Drink, then try again.”

He obeys. Still wheezing from the large gulp of moonshine, his words sound rushed and hoarse, but intelligible enough: “You two a thing?”

And to that, Raven has her answer, even though Kyle probably also has his. “No.” Curt, to the point, and followed by a frustrated sigh. (She pretends to miss the way his shoulders slump with something like relief.) “No,” she tries again, after another sip from her mug, “we just had sex.” Good sex, irreproachable sex, but the kind that had still made her want to leave the bed fast afterwards, for reasons she’s only now coming to terms with. 

Bellamy lets out some non-committal sound, drinks again, and carries on staring into his mug. She rolls her eyes at him and scoots back until she leans against the wall beside him. 

“It’s a thing I do, I’ve been told,” she supplies, dry. “Use people for sex and use sex to hide away the issues I’m not ready to deal with.” 

Not that grief over Finn’s death was something as simple as an issue. 

“Betrayal and grief aren’t issues,” comes the remark from Bellamy, a full minute later. He’s mulled that over, and maybe his thoughts are muddled by the booze, but they're accurate and on target with Raven as usual. She feels, as soon as he says that, like his understanding of her has her in a chokehold. 

Being this exposed and readable to a guy would’ve irritated her any other time, but tonight she just gives back a soft, “Yeah.” Because grief wasn’t just an issue, and feeling betrayed back when hadn’t just been an unjustified feeling. The fact that he includes that in his answer tells her, gives her at least a hint, that he doesn’t mind having been the object of her sexual solution. Still, she likes Bellamy now. More than she’d liked Bellamy back then, and she’d liked him fine on that day after he’d given her the right sort of pep talk to keep her from leaving.

So, her turn at the awkward question: “Did you mind? That I – “

“No,” he cuts her before she finishes the question, his gaze on her intense. She feels hot under the collar of her shirt, which shouldn’t be happening this late in the year. And worse, it gets decidedly worse when he licks his lips, when his gaze drops unintentionally to her mouth; brief as the movement and the glance are, she feels them run through her like electricity, down her spine and between her legs. And that’s – that one’s new, since Mount Weather. 

( _Oh fuck,_ Raven’s more sober conscience thinks.)

“Besides,” Bellamy continues, drawing her back to the present, keeping her focused on the way he avoids her eyes now and looks at the drink. “I got sex out of it too, remember?” 

She can’t help it, unexpected as it is; she snorts. Yeah, he’d gotten a lot more out of _that_ than Raven had, but she can’t really begrudge him the night. (Put in perspective, the fact that he’d asked if it had helped or not, had helped. It had formed her expectations, for the future. Maybe for that reason, Kyle had failed.)

As they’re sitting, her right leg brushing his, she can knock her knee against his knee. “So you know everything about my sex life, now.” This? This is how friends behave. This was how she’d been around Finn, before they’d first kissed, before they’d first fucked; even afterwards. This is how Raven acts, when she’s your friend. “Tell me something about yours.”

She feels faintly proud that she makes him choke on his drink. Because at this point, their mugs are empty, he tops them off and averts his gaze again. What a prude, that Bellamy. 

“Something like what? I don’t have one – right now. It just…”

Her time to read him: “Doesn’t feel right?”

He looks at her. “Yeah.” 

She looks at him. “So tell me about before.” She lets their mugs clink together. “Your first conquest, something juicy, come on. Pay up, we're uneven.” 

Be it the booze, or her, he seems amused enough and generous enough that he indulges her curiosity. “Well, on the Ark there hadn’t been anyone. What with –“

“Floorboard sister?”

“Yeah. And Guard training, that took up time and opportunities. Nobody really wanted to fuck the guy who might push the button on their floating at one point.”

“Mm. And on the ground, that all changed?”

There’s a curious little smile at the corner of his lips that she can’t figure out yet. One day, another day. He’s talking, she focuses on that. “Sort of. You noticed I had my own tent back then.”

“The dictator tent,” she mutters. “More like huge dick-tator.” 

“ _Ha_.” He’s dry, but given that he shrugs she takes it to mean that he doesn’t disagree. He’d been a huge dick back then, so. “So yeah, it got me attention.”

“Lil’ Bellamy lost his purity at last,” she dramatizes, hand gestures and all.

“Shut up, Reyes.” 

Before he shuts down, she prods – carefully – further. “So, what then? You had your fair pickings? Hotties with the need to reaffirm their rebellious nature by banging the bangable leader?”

He mouths _bangable_ like it’s a question, and looks at her like he can’t believe she’s asked him that; Raven shrugs, because whatever – she’s tipsy. He sighs, and confirms, “A few. It was…making up for lost time on everyone’s part, I guess.”

“So, like…who?” She grins, vicious, “Do I know them?” 

“You know everyone, Raven. By name.”

“Okay, so give me names.”

“That’s not happening.” She groans, and he lets out a laugh before offering a tease instead: “There were two, once. Girls – though actually now I think they might’ve been more in it for the tent than for me.”

Raven lets out a whistle there, because for all that she and Finn experimented, for all that she is a tactile person who enjoys (enjoyed?) sex, a threesome hasn’t been on the list of possibilities…well, ever. “And then?”

And then, Bellamy grows quiet. She thinks, maybe they died; maybe all his partners, his lovers, they’d been amongst those they all lost. She thinks, maybe she’s fucked up, and ends up holding her breath. “And then,” he finally adds, quiet, staring into his mug. “There was a girl.”

Oh. _She was special_ , Raven thinks suddenly, given his expression. (She pretends she also doesn’t feel tense because of this.)

“A real pain in the ass,” he adds, glancing at her through the corner of his eyes. “But incredible.”

She’s glued to her spot. She is frozen in it, her conscience watching the events happen from somewhere outside her body. It’s alien, the way her throat constricts, they way her heart clenches, the way she _knows_ and _feels_ , and most frighteningly, the way she _wants_. 

And he’s not done. “Scary smart, sharper than a sniper’s aim, and…beautiful. But I wasn’t what she needed, not longer than the night, so… that was that.” He's finished his third glass of moonshine, by the time she finds her voice again. 

“And then?” _Please_ , she thinks – afraid of the responsibility, feeling like it’s too much too soon, and yet not demanded of her or imposed on her -- _please let there be more people_.

“And then, we went to war.” 

She sucks air in through her teeth. “Nobody?” _After me_.

“Nobody.” _After you._

The thing is, Bellamy never asked. Bellamy probably won’t ever ask, unless she shows up naked in his room again, because he is okay with being used. And yet, strangely, Raven feels like she’s betrayed him. Betrayed him, and that sadly mediocre sex they’d had that one time, by sleeping later with Wick. It’s a terrible feeling, guilt. It makes her act stupid, like: “And if you had to choose the best experience?”

He knows what she’s doing. He must. “You.” He must know, because he answers with deadly aim again. 

“First?” 

“Yeah. I’d choose you first.” He must know. He must. 

She falls silent, grim, the guilt struggling to overpower the unbidden pride and joy she feels over that stupid, simple answer. Simple and complicated, and complicating her life all over. He looks at her, and sees that on her face, and he gives her a way out: “Even though I might not have been the best.” 

“It helped,” she rushes to say. Offers him this relief, too little too late and too complicated. “I just didn’t want it to.” 

“I know.” 

“No you don’t.” It’s with a scowl that she says like, because now she’s crashing straight into denial. He can’t know her that well, he can’t. He’s known her for _months_ , they haven’t even been friends as long as he’s known her, he _can’t_. 

“Yes, Raven.” Like he’s telling a child. “I do. I know you. Enough to know that right now, we should stop drinking, before you to get mad at me for getting a read on you, and kick me out. Just remember one thing, before you do.”

“What?”

“You got the read on me, first.”

He’s right. He’s right, they should stop drinking. But he’s wrong – he doesn’t know her that well. If he had, he’d have guessed that what she was closest to doing wasn’t to get mad at him for reading her down to her soul. 

That it’s not fair of her to do this only occurs to Raven after she’s reached out, after she’s grabbed a fistful of his shirt, after she’s tugged him closer, after she’s crushed her lips to his. After the taste of moonshine and the taste of his mouth mix together on her tongue, after he groans against her mouth, after he runs his fingers up her side. After they lose track of themselves for a few minutes, and spill their drinks on her cot in an attempt to touch with both hands, greedy and needy. 

After that, when she’s been tugged easily into his lap, when he sets his hands on her thigh above the brace and _doesn’t_ comment on the design of it being too complicated to get off quickly, that’s when she feels like it’s not fair. To him, to herself, and – though she hasn’t promised him anything and doesn’t owe him anything – to Kyle. 

“We can’t – I can’t.” And Bellamy, who might’ve once pretended to be the worst of the guys, stops without even questioning her. It acts like a fist, wrapped around her heart and squeezing down again, and for a second she thinks she could learn to let go and get lost in all this understanding. And in his eyes, in the freckles on his cheeks, in the length and density of his eyelashes. She emends: “Not yet.” 

Because, while it wouldn’t be fair of her to continue now until she’s emotionally better, until they both are, or until she’s settled things with Wick, it also wouldn’t be fair to her to not admit that she wants him. Her whole body is telling her she does, waking up from sleepless slumber again under his careful, quiet touch. 

“Not yet,” he murmurs, closing his eyes when she lets her forehead drop against his, breathing in synch with her. When he licks his lips she feels his tongue brush against her lips, and shivers down to the marrow of her bones. “But not never.” 

“No, not never,” she admits, and leans in to nudge the side of her nose against his. “Give me time?” _Please_ , she’d say, were she softer. Were she less wild, less Raven. Thankfully, he takes all he gets from her. 

“Yeah.” 

She doesn’t kiss him again, but she doesn’t pull back yet either. He doesn’t try to get more, but he also doesn’t stop touching her either. His touches might be platonic and chaste, fingers on her waist or brushing her hair behind her ear, but he still holds her through the shivers they elicit. And never, not once, asking for what she’s not ready to give. 

Which is why, she think for the flicker of a second, maybe one day she might end up giving him everything.


End file.
